Harvey Weinstein doesn't help his designer girlfriend Georgina Chapman get coverage — well, except for that meeting with Anna Wintour when she was starting out. Fashion Week interlopers were able to buy tickets to Bryant Park shows on Craigslist. Food Network star Paula Dean had a run-in with a naked man in the hallway of the Regency Hotel. Later, skaters: The Roxy closes for good on March 10. Lynyrd Skynyrd will perform tonight at Snitch, accompanied by a dozen strippers. Lindsay Lohan will attend Robert Altman's memorial service in L.A. after skipping the one in New York. Megaproducer Scott Rudin won't return Cindy Adams's calls.

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DreamWorks and Paramount took out a full-page ad in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter to say that Jamie Foxx's character in Dreamgirls isn't based on Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr.Lindsay Lohan skipped out on "father figure" Robert Altman's memorial service. Jeffrey Chodorow thinks Frank Bruni's smackdown of his Kobe Club is personal, and he took out a full-page ad in the Times to say so. Rapper Common bad-mouthed the Duke lacrosse team; now he's performing at the university. Vogue's André Leon Tally went on a shopping spree with Jennifer Hudson.

Barry Diller denies that Frank Gehry built him an invader-proof, bullet-proof bunker in the bathroom of his office at the new IAC headquarters. So Pamela and Kid didn't break up over Borat — they broke up because Pam partied too much and left the kids home with Kid (and maybe lied about her miscarriage). New crotch-flashing best friends Paris Hilton and Britney Spears will host the Billboard Music Awards Monday in Vegas. Rush & Molloy "breaks" the news that the "raisin face" Nicole Richie was referring to on her blog is Rachel Zoe, which, like, everyone knew two days ago. Ed Koch lost his pants at an airport in Portugal. Steve Schirripa accidentally head-butted James Gandolfini on the set of The Sopranos. Bobby Kennedy Jr. had dinner with his sister's husband's ex-wife. The publishers of InStyle want the magazine's weddings editor to make things a little more highbrow. Snoop Dogg filed a $2 million lawsuit against his record label for royalties owed; TomKat spent $4.75 million for a cottage in London. Robert Altman tattooed dogs for a living before he made movies. Publicist Dan Klores has a movie in Sundance this year, his third in five years. Some people laughed at a screening for a new comedy about Adolph Hitler, and some people didn't. (And yes, the director's Jewish.) Cindy Adams speculates (twice!) that ABC's Primetime co-anchor John Quinones will take over Ed Bradley's vacant seat at 60 Minutes. Liz Smith reminds us that Rudy and Judy Giuliani are truly, madly, deeply in love. Lillo Brancato, of A Bronx Tale fame, is in solitary confinement at Rikers Island for a third time (this time for heroin). And the Post scolds the Daily News for calling a kettle black.

Robert Altman — the greatest living American filmmaker until about this time yesterday, when he died suddenly at the age of 81 — told people he'd direct movies until his last breath, and that note of orneriness was his leitmotif: No one was going to tell him he couldn't work. Sometimes he joked that he didn't do much of anything anyway — which was a lie with a half-kernel of truth. Altman certainly didn't direct the way others did. He assembled ecosystems (platoons of gifted actors with vast histrionic reserves), set them in motion, and then pointed a camera (often two cameras) and a microphone (always many microphones) at them. He would sift through his hours of vocal tracks for the words he wanted you to register — Bob Balaban, his collaborator on Gosford Park, marveled that Altman made choices in seconds that would have taken someone else months. He was a Zen director. His camera stood coolly back from the exhibitionists — sometimes contemptuously (if the characters were right-wingers or snobs), more often with wonder.

The AP is reporting that Robert Altman, the legendary director of M*A*S*H, Nashville, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and countless other classic films, has died at 81. If we were any good at the Web-video thing, we'd give you a long, carefully choreographed tracking shot of the office in his memory.
Robert Altman, Leading Director, Dies at 81 [AP via NYT]
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